More than 90% of the 3,775 writers who cast ballots in Los Angeles and New York voted to immediately end the work stoppage, capping the entertainment industry's most contentious labor dispute in recent history.
"Rather than being shut out of the future of content creation and delivery, writers will lead the way as TV migrates to the Internet and platforms for new media are developed," said Patric M. Verrone, president of the WGA, West.
On Feb. 25, writers are expected to ratify a new three-year contract that ensures them a stake in the revenue generated when their movies, television shows and other creative works are distributed on the Internet. Whether the benefits from the new contract will be enough to offset the income writers and others lost because of the strike is a matter of debate. (LA Times 2/13/08)
Now, it's likely that you'll hear lots of interpretations on who won, including from some people here. I don't really feel confident to declare a winner, but the debate will continue for a while, and then there will be another fight. That's kind of the nature of this game. But the one thing that was positive? This strike proved that the strike, as a tool, was not dead. It proved that workers still have some leverage.
Other experts believe the writers won a victory that transcends any financial gains. "It was a defining moment," said economist Harley Shaiken, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in labor issues. "It showed that a very disparate group of individuals could act with real solidarity -- and that packed real economic power."
Now, let's get back to making some decent TV, and can we just stop filming Tila Tequila? Seriously, tv execs, enough with that crap, yo. No, I really don't care who Tila hooks up with tonight, and that's not going to change no matter how many times you show her in lewd and suggestive positions with people of various genders.
And why is Ricky Gervais on HBO? That man should be on every single tv, not pay cable. Except, maybe not in music videos.
AP (and everybody else) has the report on a possible resolution to the Writer's strike. The rank-and-file membership will see the deal today and the WGA could potentially be back at work on Monday. Two interesting lines from the article:
"I believe it is a good deal. I am going to be recommending this deal to our membership," Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, told reporters before the New York meeting at a Times Square hotel.
"Much has been achieved, and while this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success," guild leaders Winship and Patric Verrone, head of the Writers Guild of America, West, said in an e-mailed message to members.
We have several people here who know the intricacies of the situation better than I, so I won't get into it much. But from what I understand, it does indeed qualify as imperfect but significant.
There's positive news from the Writer's strike. The L.A. Times is reporting that a contract has been negotiated between the two sides. The two sides have been engaged in unofficial negotiations for the past two weeks. And both sides have been very careful to keep all news blacked out.
The article says that the proposal will be presented to the union's negotiating committee board by the negotiators on Monday.
Here is the problem with Chris Lehane going to work for the studios for me. Working for Democrats and Democratic causes means we are working to improve the lives of the many not the few. Going to work for these massive media conglomerates is the opposite. We are for people not profits. Unfortunately Chris Lehane has done this before and rather likes working for corporations. The huge piece of research on the Chris Lehane blog starts off with this quote:
"I like dealing with CEOs. I like taking strategies and tactics we used in the White House and applying them to the corporate world."
Chris Lehane decided that he was going to work for the huge movie studios and television companies and work to bust the union during a strike. You just don't do that as a Democratic operative. It is incompatible with Democratic values and impossible to justify. The studios were the ones who walked away from the negotiating table. Look, there is no way I and others would not be this riled up about a Democratic operative simply taking a gig working for any old corporation. It is the union busting that is an enormous problem. Undermining solidarity during a strike is the cardinal sin.
Now under Lehane's direction, the studios are attempting to divide the WGA membership and they are not being subtle about it. How else to describe the counters they have up on the newly redesigned AMPTP site. I first spotted them on a LAT banner ad. If you notice, the second banner is about the IATSE, whose leadership has not been supportive of the writers. They are modeled after the ones on the United Hollywood blog.
(Notice that the TNS survey they are crowing about on the top of the website is a "internet" survey and has absolutely no statistical value.)
This is part of a pattern of behavior from Chris Lehane, which Jane picked up on at Fire Dog Lake, but I want to pick up on the section titled: Lehane and the Bay Bridge Welders. It illustrates quite well Lehane's disregard of workers. This time it was not over being paid a fair wage, but over the worker's basic safety.
It appears Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will be following the precendent of Carson Daly and going back to work. With or without their writers. Not sure if they are pleased about it, though.
"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" will resume production on Jan. 7 without their striking writers, the Comedy Central network announced Thursday.
***
In a joint statement, Stewart and Colbert said: "We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence."(AP 12.20.07)
Speaking of the writers, it appears that Arnold is talking to some of them. From Past Deadline (via CA Newsladder), we hear that Arnold has been asking about a few vehicles to get him back into the action hero game:
Well, we hear from the folks who have been walking the WGA strike picket line that The Guv has floated word to his peeps to spread the message that once his last term as the state's biggest cheese ends in January 2011, he would like to resume his role as a boxoffice superstar/film icon.
A few high-profile writers of action films who wished not to be ID'd (you know how that is) were heard conferring that before the strike hit, agents were putting out feelers for material and pitches to develop projects with Schwarzenegger in mind. Nothing specific yet. All just preliminary stuff. What this means is that Arnold isn't so very interested in running for the Senate and potentially spending all of that time in boring old Washington, D.C., California/Austria boy that he is. (Past Deadline 12.20.07)
Well, the holidays are rapidly approaching, and thus let's start out this week with a BANG! WooHoo, put your Monday morning smile on! Here are a few stories of note, once again bound together with bullets.
A vote is scheduled in the Assembly for the health care package, but as has been discussed here, it seems Senator Perata is reluctant. There have been comments here about other Senators not so sure about this plan. The vote will likely appear on the Cal Channel, but don't expect the vote to occur at 1pm when it the floor session is scheduled. I'm guessing the caucus meetings might take a while.
SF Mayor Gavin Newsom is discussing a tax on sugary sodas. Apparently, he's blaming obesity in children on sodas. Oh, what's that you say, there is a link between the two? Oh, well, I guess it's time to sell that Pepsi stock.
There's a little tussle going on in the other side of the California blogosphere on Prop 93. Jon Fleischman opposes it. Former GOP Sen Jim Brulte has endorsed it. Check out the back and forth here. (Disclosure)
Apparently Orange County isn't content with being the biggest municipal bankruptcy in the history of our country, they invested in a bunch of bad debt in the mortgage crisis. It's coming home to roost now. ( LA Times)
Some writers are bypassing the studios and starting up their own new media production companies. By the by, QuarterLife, an independent web show, which was then given some money by NBC, will be shown by that network in February. (The QuarterLife folks make clear that their goal was not to create strike busting programming, but that NBC had an option to buy that they, legally, couldn't refuse) Perhaps the studios will learn a bit from these new developments. Or they won't and they'll go the way of the dinosaur. Either way, we'll likely get better content.
Over the flip you'll find the weekly Democratic radio address, this time from Assembly member Ted Lieu about the mortgage crisis. Consider this an open thread.
Full disclosure: I was on an official contract with the WGA, and continue to work unofficially with the crew at United Hollywood.
So, the AMPTP walked out of negotiations in what seems overwhelmingly like a pre-prepared cynical ploy, given the fact that the corporations had a press release ready for submission no more than 20 minutes after they walked out of the talks.
Well, in response to the AMPTP breaking off talks, the WGA is filing a complaint with the NLRB asserting unfair labor practices by the AMPTP--namely, refusal to negotiate in good faith.
And the AMPTP has responded with the following little snippet, under the direction of their Union Buster-in-chief, Chris Lehane:
The WGA's filing of a complaint with the NLRB reminds us of the old lawyers' adage: When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is on your side, argue the law. And when you don't have either the law or the facts on your side, you pound the table. The WGA has now been reduced to pounding the table, and this baseless, desperate NLRB complaint is just the latest indication that the WGA's negotiating strategy has achieved nothing for working writers.
Well, let's talk about the facts and the law. The facts are as stated: the AMPTP broke off talks unilaterally while the WGA has remained at the table. And the law says that both management and labor have a duty to negotiate in good faith.
So, given the fact that both the law and the facts are on the side of the WGA, the people that are resorting to pounding the table are the execs at the AMPTP, with the pounding carefully orchestrated by formerly Democratic hack Chris Lehane.
Last post on this today I promise. This is new information and California specific. Courtesy of Jane Hamsher of Fire Dog Lake I have this quote from Anastasia Ordonez at the California Labor Federation. Jane called them to inquire about the status of Chris Lehane's contract with the Fed on health care and passed it off to me, given the California angle.
He's been a close labor ally for many years, so we're looking into this but I'm not going to comment on what our relationship will be in the future.
Ordonez stated that their contract with Chris Lehane was terminated around Thanksgiving, because they were not sure what they were going to do with regards to health care. That makes sense, since the health care negotiations were ongoing, rather than completely falling apart and there was not a huge need to have a guy like Lehane around.
The California Labor Federation maintains a blacklist of contractors for situations like this one, where someone goes to work directly against the labor movement. They can only add someone to that blacklist if a Local requests it. WGA is not a member, therefore they cannot make that request.
SEIU has been much closer to the WGA than the members of the Labor Fed and AFL-CIO, thus it is not that surprising to see them moving more slowly than Change to Win and SEIU.
The California Labor Federation is the state AFL-CIO, with more than 1,200 affiliated local unions, representing 2.1 million union members in diverse communities and sectors of the state's economy. Manufacturing, service, retail, construction, public sector and private industry unions join together in the Federation to protect and advance the rights and interests of all California workers.
Having the Fed put Lehane on the blacklist would obviously be a pretty big deal. If they do, I will be sure to blog it up.
Change to Win had a general consulting contract with Chris Lehane. That contract was terminated upon discovery of his role supporting the studios in the writers guild strike. As you know, Change to Win and its affiliates stand solidly behind the writers in their struggle for fairness, so we did not think twice about this decision.
The studios hired Fabiani & Lehane, at a crisis fee of around $100,000 a month, to battle the WGA members driven PR machine. They did so early in the week, which was another telling sign that they had no intention of making a deal. You don't need "crisis PR" when you are doing the right thing. You hire "crisis PR" when you are going to walk out of talks and blame the other side for ruining Christmas. So, Lehane and Fabiani, longtime Democratic PR guys, have decided to switch sides and do some union busting. I guess they have come a long way since 2002.
No idea yet if they have lost more than they gained by signing this contract with AMPTP.
SEIU Local 99 in Los Angeles -- education workers who include teacher's aids, cafeteria workers and crossing guards -- have fired former Clinton spokesman Chris Lehane from a consulting contract in support of the WGA .
"By the end of the week, I believe Chris Lehane will have no union clients because of his work for the AMPTP," says SEIU President Andy Stern, who confirms that all Change to Win Unions are severing ties with Lehane. "His days are numbered in the labor movement."
Chris Lehane by opting to go to work for the studios made a choice between that contract and those from labor. SEIU has been working to support the writers, so it comes as no surprise that they are the first to fire him. The question now is how quickly the other unions follow suit. As noted here back in October, the California Labor Federation hired Lehane to work on health care reform, outside of the IOHC coalition. I do not know what other unions he is under contract with, though we should hopefully find out soon.
While Stern is not my favorite right now, given his meddling in health care and a power struggle at the SEIU State Council that Brian has documented, this is a very strong and useful statement by him.
SEIU Local 99 in Los Angeles -- education workers who include teacher's aids, cafeteria workers and crossing guards -- have fired former Clinton spokesman Chris Lehane from a consulting contract in support of the WGA.
"By the end of the week, I believe Chris Lehane will have no union clients because of his work for the AMPTP," says SEIU President Andy Stern, who confirms that all Change to Win Unions are severing ties with Lehane. "His days are numbered in the labor movement."[Link]
I'm glad to see some retribution taken against Chris Lehane. We need to hold Democratic consultants accountable when they go to work against progressive organization.
Watch this fabulous video put together by FireDogLake and then click on over to take action. Great song. Important message.
Send an email to an executive on one of your favorite shows. I sent one to my favorite new show Life. I love me a good cop drama, especially one with Sarah Shahi in it.
As you may have noticed from recentposts, I'm a big fan of Naomi Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine. It's one of the best books published this decade, and provides perhaps the best overview of the last 30 years yet offered. Her argument is essentially this:
The shock doctrine, like all doctrines, is a philosophy of power. It's a philosophy about how to achieve your political and economic goals. And this is a philosophy that holds that the best way, the best time, to push through radical free-market ideas is in the aftermath of a major shock. Now, that shock could be an economic meltdown. It could be a natural disaster. It could be a war. But the idea, as you just saw in the film, is that these crises, these disasters, these shocks soften up whole societies. They discombobulate them. People lose their bearings. And a window opens up, just like the window in the interrogation chamber. And in that window, you can push through what economists call "economic shock therapy."
She also links this to torture - quoting from CIA interrogation manuals that explain how the application of shock can open a window in which the subject is weakened and suggestible, a window that torturers or free market economists can use to push through a radical agenda that might otherwise be resisted. This works on individuals, societies...and labor unions.
It's in this context that two recent posts from the United Hollywood blog should be understood. In it, they explain the basics of management, union-busting strategy - that a successful anti-union strategy relies on precisely these tactics of terror, disorientation, and shock to destroy worker solidarity. That the writers appear to understand this could give them a powerful advantage in their ongoing strike, and these insights not only suggest how unions can win, but how the shock doctrine and union busting are inextricably tied together.
Dennis Kucinich's approach to the economy is so practical and farsighted, I sometimes wonder why it isn't discussed more; even by Kucinich! But, I guess Iraq is always the dominating issue.
However, amazingly, this plan addresses: balancing the budget, tempering the Pentagon war machine, fair taxation reform, leveling the business sector to enable small businesses to compete, our $800 Billion trade deficit, worker's rights human rights and environmental concerns, the millions of outsourced jobs, and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure-while at the same time creating more national wealth with millions of jobs, promoting renewable energies and saving families money on bills! It is insanely practical and wholly part of his message of "Strength Through Peace" for America.
We have to recognize the relationship between global warming and "global warring". Just as dependence on foreign oil has led to wars in the Middle East, allocating an outrageous amount of our budget to the Pentagon facilitates and preserves this dependence on foreign oil. Dennis Kucinich understands this connection and so, as stated above, will slash the Pentagon budget by 15% as his first step to move away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable and renewable fuels and energy sources. As stated above, this money will go to education, as well as creating his Works Green Administration (WGA). The WGA will couple the EPA with NASA to develop new technologies to utilize alternative fuels and energies.
Looks like the writers and the studios are going to be heading back to the table on November 26th. The strike will continue as planned through next week. And the writers have not agreed to stop striking.
But if the story is true, this is absolutely positive news.
Today's Blog Roundup is on the flip. No categories today, but everything is pretty self-explanatory. Let me know what I missed in comments, or just use this as an open thread.
